The pipe pulling device relates to entrenching equipment in general and more specifically to connecting plastic pipe to a pulling machine. Plastic pipe fits within a housing and one or more wedges fit within the plastic pipe. Advancing a shaft within the pipe and through the wedges compresses the pipe between the wedges and the housing. Pulling on the shaft then pulls the pipe through the soil for entrenching.
Contractors, utilities, and earthmovers have entrenched pipe, cable, and lines across the land. Buried lines leave a clean landscape and have less disruption to the utilities located within the buried line and on easements. Buried lines suffer less from vandals and the elements. Contractors have dug trenches and then buried lines within the trench, piled earth upon lines, plowed lines, or bored into soil. Particularly in the utility and irrigation industries, contractors use a plow like or boring implement to draw pipe to a desired depth in the soil and then to pull the pipe through the soil to the desired destination. In the electric, telephone, and cable television industries, contractors entrench the pipe containing a cord. The cord and the pipe attach to a pulling device. Once the pipe reaches the desired depth and location, the contractor ties the desired cable to the cord and pulls the cord through the length of the pipe.
Plastic pipe has a homogeneous composition with a low coefficient of friction, or slick surface. Contractors pull plastic pipe readily through the soil with little resistance. To pull pipe, contractors grasp the pipe with a variety of existing devices. The devices encounter the slick surface of the pipe and slip off the pipe during pulling. Devices have grasped the pipe wall in jaws or crushed the pipe to get a strong grip to withstand a pull through soil.